1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording/reproducing apparatus enabling data transmission between the different recording media, effectively, and in particular, it relates to a recording/reproducing apparatus for video/audio signals.
2. Description of the Related Arts
In recent years, in the place of the videotape recorders for home use, so-called HDD recorders are spreading rapidly and distributed widely, which applies a hard disk as the recording medium therein. Among of those, there is a large demand, in particular, upon an integral-type recorder, which enables the recording/reproducing from/onto other recording medium being different from the HDD, such as, the conventional videotape or a DVD-RAM (i.e., Digital Versatile Disc Random Access Memory), etc. In the case where the HDD and the DVD-RAM can be integrated into one body, for example, broadcasting programs received are recorded onto the HDD, temporarily, and only favorite ones among of them are copied or moved onto the DVD-RAM or the videotape recorder, for the purpose of preservation or saving, while deleting the data recorded on the HDD and so on, thereby improving the usability thereof.
The apparatus, for recoding/reproducing of such the digital signals, is able to record contents of a large capacity in a digital manner; therefore, it is easy to make a copy of the video signals, etc. And, further since no such the deterioration occurs that appears when recording/reproducing the signals in an analog manner; therefore, there is a necessity of the technology for the purpose of protection of the copyright thereof.
As one of such the technologies, which can be used for protection of the copyright, there can be listed up an encryption of the contents. As the prior art for achieving such the copyright protection within the HDD recorder mentioned above, it is disclosed, such as, in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2003-167686 (2003) for example. Further, in the prior art for achieving the copyright protection within the DVD recorder, as is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2000-357370 (2000), for example, the video information is encrypted when being recorded, and therefore it cannot be reproduced if it is not decrypted in accordance with a predetermined process. Also, as the prior art for achieving the copyright protection between the HDD recorder and the videotape recorder, a technology is already known in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2003-173615 (2003), for example.